Video project preserves patients’ life histories
Video project preserves patients’ life histories
Teens give families lasting memories
Teen volunteers for The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast in Largo, FL, decided to combine their collective high-tech skills with service by providing free videotaped memories to hospice patients.
The students obtained $650 in local grant funding in January 1998, several months after they wrote a grant proposal and researched video camera prices, says Brenda Corace, an 18-year-old senior at Palm Harbor University High School in Palm Harbor, FL. "Hospice counselors trained us and gave sample questions to ask patients; they gave us advice on how to approach the patient."
About 15 students, including Corace, have conducted taped interviews as part of their "Life, Camera, Action!" program.
Hospice counselors play an important role in offering the project to patients, and are present when teens do the interviews. They provide emotional support for both patients and the teens. Each time there’s a life review, there are two students with a camera and a counselor present. "The counselor is key, because the counselor knows that patient and the family," says Sandra Mahood, BA, intergenerational volunteer program specialist.
The students also edit the videotapes according to the patient’s wishes. If patients begin to lose focus of what to say, the teens gently direct them, by asking "What is your favorite childhood memory?" or "How did you meet your spouse?"
The patient may share memories, a personal history, or leave an important legacy for children or grandchildren, Mahood says.
"One 39-year-old man, who is terminal and has a three-year-old son, said he wanted to do the video to leave it for his son," Mahood says. "When the boy grows up, he’ll see what his dad looked like, and hear his dad’s special messages."
Students have done about 25 videos so far, and each story is different. Corace was impressed by a grandmother in her late 50s who was dying of cancer in a hospice residence home. The woman wanted the video for her grandchildren in Washington, DC, whom she had only met once.
The woman wanted to tell her grandchildren about her family history. She based her video around the theme of flowers, Corace says."She said that as she moved from place to place, she remembered flowers every place she went."
The hospice will expand the project by offering patients other types of life review options, Mahood says. The expanded project will be funded by a Florida Learn and Serve grant, which is sponsored by the Florida Commission on Community Service in Tallahassee.
"Some people don’t like to be on camera, so we’ll offer other ways to do it," she says. "We’ll work toward a grant that provides audio tapes or a memory book, which is a photo album that students will put together with the patient, or a journal to give to the patient’s family and friends."
Corace says the video program has been especially gratifying to the students because the work appears to mean so much to the hospice families. "We’ve gotten so much response from families after a patient has passed away, and they tell us how much it means to them."
Sources
• Brenda Corace, Student, Palm Harbor University High School, 740 Sandy Hook Road, Palm Harbor, FL 34683. Telephone: (727) 784-9496.
• Mary Labyak, MSW, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, 300 East Bay Drive, Largo, FL 33770-3770. Telephone: (727) 586-4432. Fax: (727) 586-5213.
• Sandra Mahood, BA, Intergenerational Volunteer Program Specialist, The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, 300 East Bay Drive, Largo, FL 33770-3770. Telephone: (727) 586-4432. Fax: (727) 586-5213.
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